by I got an email yesterday from Change.org asking me to sign a petition regarding “Cecil the Lion”. The email said 846,000 people had signed the petition which asks for “justice for Cecil”. As of a few minutes ago, that had risen to 922,009 signers.
These people need to get a life.
Trophy hunting, which Cheryl Semcer of Hoboken, NJ blames for the loss of a large part of the African lion population, is not the problem. Indeed, by putting an economic value on these animal, it has done more to preserve lions than anything a ban under the Endangered Species Act would ever do. It is the same with elephants and elephant ivory.
Am I the only person out there who has found the name of the lion – Cecil – somewhat ironic?
I would wager that most of the 922,009 people who have signed the petition never knew that Zimbabwe used to be known as Rhodesia. It was a country named for that famed British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. So we have a lion (the symbol of Great Britain) named for a British imperialist (Cecil Rhodes) by British scientists killed in the country formerly named for the imperialist (Rhodesia) that was forced by Britain to be handed over to Communist-backed insurgents who renamed it Zimbabwe.
